scholarly journals POPULATION’S VULNERABILITY TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN RUNNYMEDE VILLAGE AT TZANEEN LOCAL MUNICIPALITY, SOUTH AFRICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
F.K. Matlakala ◽  
L. Nyahunda ◽  
J.C. Makhubele

Purpose of the study: This paper was aimed at determining the population’s vulnerability to natural disasters in Runnymede Village at Tzaneen Local Municipality, South Africa. Methodology: The researchers used the qualitative research approach and the exploratory research design. A total number of 16 participants took part in the study. The participants consisted of small-scale farmers, social workers, and disaster management members. Data was collected through individual semi-structured and focus group interviews and was analysed thematically. Main Findings: The study found that impoverished people in the rural areas, people living with disabilities, children, and women are mainly vulnerable to natural disasters. The study thus concludes that people in rural areas are more prone to the impact of natural disasters due to geopolitical, structural, and cultural systems. Applications of this study: People’s relatives, friends, and others close to them can disappear alongside their livelihoods, homes, hospitals, roads, transport, telecommunications networks, and schools. These effects trigger various emotions such as fear, anger, and grief to community members. To this end, community members will receive holistic intervention from relevant social workers, who will be providing psychosocial support. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study contributes positively to the field of social service, and provides guidelines to social workers to address natural disasters. Due to their educational background, social workers should fight the injustices that people in rural areas are predisposed to. They could challenge these injustices (inequalities) as these infringe on individuals’ rights to dignity and other associated rights.

Water SA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (3 July) ◽  
Author(s):  
DC Sambo ◽  
A Senzanje ◽  
K Dhavu

Some parts of the rural areas of South Africa are receiving water services below the legislative standards stipulated in the Water Services Act (1997) of South Africa. This is because small-scale water infrastructures (SWI), including standpipes, handpumps and windmills, are failing to supply adequate water in rural communities for various activities that enhance their livelihoods. This is due to technical, community, institutional, and environmental factors. Literature indicates that these factors are complex in nature. However, research on their complex interactions has been limited. Therefore, the complex interactions of the factors causing SWI failure were investigated and analysed in this study. A qualitative research approach was employed to investigate the factors that cause failure of SWI. The network approach combined with graph theory and the community structure method were used to generate a theme and domain network that allowed for a systematic analysis and interpretation of the causes of SWI failure in the study area. The major causes of failure identified include: (i) the use of a top-down approach to implement water projects in rural communities without consultation, (ii) sharing of SWI in high numbers due to the limited number of SWI available/functional, resulting in overloading and increased breakdowns, and (iii) drying up of water sources due to poor siting leading to vandalism of SWI. Overall, the causes of SWI failure are as a result of the complex interactions of different categories of factors. The theme and domain network is a powerful tool that can be used represent and analyse the complex interactions. It is therefore imperative for interventions aiming to improve rural water supply to analyse the complex interactions of the causes of SWI failure to understand the underlying problems at a level of a system, in order to propose suitable solutions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 667-678
Author(s):  
Sandile Clement Masuku ◽  
Hendrick Puleng Motlalekgosi

A slight decrease in stock theft in many provinces in South Africa must be commended irrespective of the reasons behind the decrease because it is a step in the right direction. However, an increase in stock theft in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa is a cause for concern and must be handled with urgency. This paper examines the extent to which the community is involved in the fight against stock theft in the rural areas of the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The study employed a qualitative research approach that used semi-structured in-depth interviews to collect data. The sample consisted of 22 participants selected through purposive sampling, who included farmers, herdsmen, Community Police Forum members, and community leaders. The study found that the community in the rural areas of Mpumalanga is not involved in the fight against stock theft and that this could mainly be attributed to the poor relationship between the South African Police Service and the community. It was also found that poverty and unemployment are the main contributing factors to increased stock theft in the rural areas of the Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Local Municipality in Mpumalanga. 


Author(s):  
Dr. M. Vairavan ◽  
Ms. K. Kavitha

Majority of the rural women of SHGs are Micro - Entrepreneurs very few are associated with Small Scale Enterprises. Those women are not only developing with sustainable economy but also able to develop other women economically sustainable by providing job opportunities. The rural women entrepreneurs with the sustainable economic development are able to contribute to the family’s, community’s and the nation’s development. Rural women frequently have primary responsibility for agricultural production, in addition to domestic responsibilities and childcare. In developing country like India where economic status of women is very pathetic especially in rural areas and opportunities of earning are very less in this scenario the Self Help Groups (SHGs) have paved the way for economic independence of rural women. This paper reviews concisely the literature in this field and addresses in particular opportunities and challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in rural areas. It examined the impact on women empowerment through micro entrepreneurship development and SHGs. The increasing presence of women in the business field as entrepreneurs has changed the demographic characteristics of business and economic growth of the country. Women-owned businesses enterprises are playing a more active role in society and the economy, inspiring academics to focus on this interesting phenomenon. This paper focuses on the problems, issues, challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, how to overcome them and to analyze policies of India government for and problems faced by them while pursuing their business.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8142
Author(s):  
Wubamlak Ayichew Workneh ◽  
Jun Takada ◽  
Shusuke Matsushita

Sectoral economic growth data in Ethiopia show that the agriculture sector has the lowest growth, which is caused by frequent drought and inefficient technologies, among other factors. As a result, the productivities of land and labor, as well as the income of small-scale farm households, are very low, and rural areas have a relatively high poverty rate. A quasi-experiment was applied to understand the impact of using small-scale irrigation motor pumps on farmers’ livelihood improvement. Specifically, a survey was conducted in 2019 on a sample of 92 small-scale irrigation motor pump and canal irrigation users as the treatment and control groups. The weighted propensity score matching method was applied to eliminate initial differences and adjust sampling proportions across the groups. Based on the average treatment effect on the treated estimation results, we cannot state that the mean income difference in small-scale irrigation motor pump users and canal irrigation system users is different from zero. This indicates that countries with little capital to invest in large-scale irrigation projects can introduce household-level small-scale irrigation motor pumps to improve farmers’ incomes.


Author(s):  
Forbes Chiromo ◽  
Goodwell Muyengwa ◽  
Joseph Makuvaza

AbstractThis study investigates the extent to which tenants in a jewellery incubator in the Limpopo Province of South Africa network. Since 1994 SEDA has set up more than 31 incubation centres in furniture making, construction, chemicals, jewellery, ICT, metal fabrication, agriculture and small scale mining. This study was done through a survey conducted on tenants in the SEDA Limpopo Jewellery Incubator (SLJI). Information was obtained through a structured questionnaire. The study revealed how tenants benefit from networking around exhibitions and collective purchasing of raw material. Through the Incubator institutional mechanisms, the study explains how tenants share expertise, experiences, technology and resources. Unfortunately the tenants do not initiate the own networking programmes. They lose out on benefits associated with collective effort in other areas such as advertisements, lobbying the government for industrial stands, organising an newsletter, hiring of consultants, and organising joint training programmes. Lastly the study identified opportunities that the tenants could collectively exploit in order strengthen and sustain their businesses.


2013 ◽  
Vol 59 (No. 11) ◽  
pp. 531-536
Author(s):  
S. Leshoro ◽  
T.L.A. Leshoro

Agriculture is an important sector in South Africa, and the impact that education and human development would have made in this sector via non-white small scale farming was limited through biased policies of the apartheid era. Due to apartheid laws, South Africa found itself with high levels of unskilled labour force. This study seeks to find the impacts of literacy rate and human development indices on agricultural production using Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds Test approach to co-integration. A long run relationship among the variables, agricultural production (agriculture GDP), literacy rate and human development indices were found. Literacy rate has a positively significant effect on agricultural production in the long run while Human Development Index has a positive and significant impact in the short run. This indicates that the apartheid regime fell short in recognizing the positive effect of education in the agricultural sector by denying a descent education to the majority of non-whites which were farm labourers or small scale farmers. This study provides some policy recommendations.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Osborne ◽  
Ben D’Exelle ◽  
Arjan Verschoor

In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community’s various factions is crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict on one or other aggregated indicator of social cohesion rather than on how violence-affected individuals regard and act towards their fellow community members. Here we demonstrate the value of concentrating on this latter dyadic component of social interactions and we use behavioural experiments and a social tie survey to assess, in an appropriately disaggregated manner, social cohesion in a post-conflict setting in northern Uganda. Whereas in self-reported surveys, ex-combatants appear to be well-connected, active members of their communities, the experiments unveil the continued reluctance of other community members to share or cooperate with them; fewer resources are committed to ex-combatants than to others, which is statistically significant. The dyadic nature of our analysis allows us to detect which groups are more prone to discriminate against ex-combatants, which may help facilitate targeted interventions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olawale FATOKI

The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of organisational culture on firm environmental performance in the context of the hospitality sector. The study used the quantitative research approach with descriptive and causal research design. The Denison organisational culture questionnaire was used to measure organisational culture. The Denison questionnaire contains four traits namely involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission. The questionnaire was distributed among 500 owner/managers of formal hotels and guest accommodations in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed using descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling. The results of the study indicate that the four traits of organisational culture (involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission) have significant positive impacts on the environmental performance of firms in the hospitality sector. The findings of the study can assist firms in the hospitality sector to understand the significance of internal intangible factors such as the organisational culture in the implementation of environmental sustainability initiatives.


Author(s):  
Mkhululi Ncube ◽  
Nomonde Madubula ◽  
Hlami Ngwenya ◽  
Nkulumo Zinyengere ◽  
Leocadia Zhou ◽  
...  

The impact of climate-change disasters poses significant challenges for South Africa, especially for vulnerable rural households. In South Africa, the impact of climate change at the local level, especially in rural areas, is not well known. Rural households are generally poor and lack resources to adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate change, but the extent of their vulnerability is largely not understood. This study looked at the micro-level impact of climate change, evaluated household vulnerability and assessed alternative adaptation strategies in rural areas. The results indicate that climate change will hit crop yields hard and that households with less capital are most vulnerable. These households consist of the elderly and households headed by females. Households that receive remittances or extension services or participate in formal savings schemes in villages are less vulnerable. The results suggest that households need to move towards climate-smart agriculture, which combines adaptation, mitigation and productivity growth.


Water SA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1 January) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthin Botes ◽  
Chris James ◽  
Craig M Sheridan

In South Africa, the need for water treatment is increasing, especially in the mining sector. As active water treatment technologies are expensive, the mining sector has an increasing need for passive water treatment technology, with low maintenance and operating costs, yet efficient water treatment ability. Literature on passive water treatment suggests that these systems only offer a narrow range of treatment capabilities. Therefore, hybrid water treatment systems could be a solution to low-cost water treatment in South Africa. The degrading packed bed reactor (DPBR) is one of the units comprising the hybrid treatment group. The DPBR’s main action is to convert sulfates into sulfides and alkalinity, since this reduces the impact on the environment by increasing the pH and reducing the salinity. In this study, 6 small-scale DPBRs were constructed. Each was classified according to its unique organic source (manure, straw, vegetable food processing waste, wood shavings, chicken litter and a combined sample with layers of all the carbon sources). Synthetic acid mine drainage (AMD) was fed through the 6 bioreactors for a period of 3 months. Permeabilities, leachate samples and effective void volumes were measured from the DPBRs. From the experiments conducted, it was found that the manure and combination bioreactors (with equal layers of manure, straw, compost, wood shavings and chicken litter) had the lowest overall permeabilities, with straw and compost having the highest permeabilities. Linked to this, the experiments showed that the manure and combination bioreactors had the largest decreases in effective porosity with straw and compost having the least. Hydraulically, the combination bioreactor performed the best by incorporating the best attributes from each carbon source. Wood shavings preformed almost as well. Chicken litter clogged within 18 days after the initiation of the experiment and thus was the least effective substrate.


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